St. Joseph-Metuchen, JP Stevens have the BCC’s most difficult schedules, by different metrics

You can do all the realignment you want and have the most perfect scheduling on the planet, but at the end of the day, some teams will win championships, most will not. Someone will have a higher ranking, more wins, and others won’t. That’s the nature of competitive sports when numbers come into play.

Central Jersey Sports Radio took our annual look at two different metrics, and found St. Joseph of Metuchen and JP Stevens have the most challenging schedules in the Big Central Conference this year, depending on which metric you look at.

The two we examined are OSI (Opponent Strength Index) and one we created, called “Play Up Or Down.”

OSI is what’s used by the state to determine 60 percent of the playoff formula, with power points – albeit in an altered state this year – making up the other 40%. OSI is comprised of the average Strength Index of opponents, with a win counting for the full value of a team’s OSI, and a loss garnering half those points.

Inotherwords, beating a team with an SI (Strength Index) value of 80 gets you 80 points, while losing to that team gets you a 40.

For our analysis, we took the full available OSI points and averaged them out for each team to determine a strength of schedule. St. Joe’s had the schedule with the highest average opponent Strength Index values.

But the “Play Up Or Down” is another metric we decided to look at that shows how much stronger or weaker your opponents are. And it’s a good counter to OSI.

Consider that the “best” or highest SI value team can only play down. If they have the highest SI value, everyone will be lower than them, so naturally their schedule will be “weaker” opponents. On the flip side, the team with the “lowest” SI value is always going to be playing up.

For example, Phillipsburg has the second-highest SI value in the Big Central at 80.01, but the Stateliners rank 54th among 59 Big Central teams, playing “down” to opponents who, on average, are 10.57 points lower than they are.

However, even though teams with high OSI might not always be playing “up,” they can still have a very challenging schedule. If their division is balanced, they’ll be playing similarly-ranked teams, who would conceivably also be very good.

For P’burg, that’s still a challenging schedule, meaning their opponents have an average 69.45 SI value, which is solid. It’s just that mathematically, since they’re second best in the BCC in SI value, there’s simply no one “better” than them to play.

JP Stevens has the fourth lowest SI value in the league, and the average SI of the teams on their schedule is higher compared to their own ranking than any other team in the Big Central: 18.03 points. That means, at least at the start of the season, on average, their opponents are 18 points better than them.

So how did it shake out overall in the Big Central?

Here’s a look at every Big Central team’s OSI based on the best schedule information currently available. Teams are grouped by division, and we include whether they are playing Up or Down.

As BCC President Scott Miller told us last week on Media Day, but which also has been evident through its new divisional alignments, the league has been striving for competitive balance lately, eschewing a total reliance on Group Size – which the NJSIAA has followed in eliminating Group Points from Power Points this year – and focusing more on performance on the field.

Here’s a look at each Big Central Division on the whole:

There are a few numbers to look at here.

• “Average SI” is the average strength index value of the teams in that division. According to the official starting SI numbers for 2024 released by Gridiron New Jersey, the American Silver (Phillipsburg, Ridge, Bridgewater-Raritan, Hunterdon Central and Hillsborough) has the strongest grouping of teams – on average – with a 71.57 average SI. The American Gold (with Union, St. Joseph, Westfield and Elizabeth) is next at a 67.72 average SI.
• “Range” is the margin between the lowest and highest SI value teams in a division. So while the American Silver may be ranked higher than the Gold, the Gold would be considered more competitive, as only 7.11 SI points separate the top team (Westfield, 72.30) from Union (65.19). It essentially says any game between these teams would ideally be decided by a shade more than a touchdown: 7.11 points. The Silver has a higher SI, but the range is double, 14.11 points, from the highest-ranked team (Phillipsburg, 80.01) to the lowest (Hunterdon Central 65.90).
• “Average OSI” is the average of the OSI of all the teams in a division.
• “Average +/-” is the “Up or Down” for a whole division. The United Silver will “play up” the most this year, by 9.04 SI points, while the Patriot Silver “plays down” the most this year, by 4.89 points. But remember, that’s not a lot. Nine points is a shade more than a touchdown. Five points is less than a touchdown. Those are still close, competitive games.

It’s also important to note that this evaluation includes all games – except against out-of-state competition, like the two games St. Thomas Aquinas will play this year in Maryland, which don’t count toward OSI or power points, and non-public seeding is decided by a committee anyway.

That means Big Central crossovers and non-conference games against other New Jersey opponents are included. And the BCC often uses crossovers to help “adjust” a team’s schedule to achieve competitive games.

So how do the league’s 59 teams stack up?

Below is a team-by-team look at every Big Central team’s potential OSI – the maximum they could achieve if they went undefeated – ranked from highest to lowest:

The following chart is the second metric, “Play Up Or Down,” with all 59 Big Central teams ranked in order from Up to Down:

And, of course, here’s the most important caveat of all. Strength Index values change all season long, as games are played. So whoever has the strongest schedule before the season starts may not have played the strongest schedule at the end, and vice versa.

As we do every year, Central Jersey Sports Radio will evaluate what we believe are the minimum number of wins needed to clinch a playoff berth. While there is no “set minimum” by the NJSIAA – which got rid of the .500 record requirement in the early 2000s – we look at how much each game is worth on a team’s schedule, on the average, then look at the lowest OSI-ranked teams to make the playoffs.

We might figure, for example, that Edison would need to win five games to make the playoffs. If they won four and missed, we projected correctly. If they won seven, and didn’t qualify, we missed the mark.

But if they win five or more and get in, or only win four or fewer and lose, then we got it right.

In three prior seasons of projections, Central Jersey Sports Radio’s projections have had a whopping 95% success rate. That includes going 54 for 57 last year, 55 of 57 in 2022, and 55 of 58 in 2021.

In those three years, our all-time record stands at 164 out of 172 correct in a three-year span.

At the moment, we’re waiting for the official NJSIAA classifications to be released, as they determine what supersections teams will compete in for playoff seeding, and the minimum OSI numbers will vary by group and geographic supersection.